


You Learn To Bid Them All Goodbye

by fictorium



Category: Damages
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-12
Updated: 2011-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-14 21:47:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictorium/pseuds/fictorium





	You Learn To Bid Them All Goodbye

  
Shakespeare knew what he was talking about, Patty realizes too late. Four professional cleaning companies and her own haphazard attack with a full bottle of bleach, but she thinks that in certain lights she can still see the stains on her stripped wood flooring.

Blood.

Ellen's blood.

Patty Hewes doesn't deal in regrets, they're a devalued currency in a life where she can't afford any such thing. Regrets stem from conscience, which prevents vital, everyday actions like taking advantage of bright, young law school graduates. She needed Katie, and for that she needed Ellen and what do either of them matter when Frobisher is stripped of his fortune and there's a hundred champagne toasts ringing out in Patty's name.

This is the kind of victory that careers are defined by, and all anyone cares about from the gossiping paralegals to the prying interviewers of the press, is how much money Patty has won for the victims, how big a blow she's struck against corporate America (the one that funds the media, that controls it, and so Patty indulges their illusions of impartiality).

Nobody wants to see how the sausages are made; nobody wants to know what all this wealth truly costs. They won't understand: Larry, or Katie or (god forbid) Regis; they don't know the true value of an Ellen Parsons, so what can her absence mean to them?

Patty doesn't sleep well anyway, so Phil is used to not expecting her beside them in their bed. Instead, she sits in the living room and watches the neon of the city flicker across the stains that nobody else but her seems to see anymore. The last moments of Ellen's life, painted in a lurid watercolor that Patty commissioned. The swirls and fractal patterns of splatter glow in the dim light, the floor reflecting Patty's sins back at her, in the one place she can't accept them.

She's done worse, perhaps, and maybe she'll do worse again. What's one life balanced against justice for so many? The papers like to speculate that Patty's only in this for the fame, for the power of bringing the mighty to their knees, and no one suspects that on some level she actually cares. That her own success is a way of giving to those who will never achieve their own. That nobody, regardless of their billions, will ever say 'no' to Patty Hewes and get away with it.

So Patty tries not to worry that it hurts to close her eyes, that every time her eyes sting and she has to attempt sleep she sees Ellen, her expression too trusting and her face so free of lines. No age at all, the sympathetic murmurs said. Acquaintances and relative strangers alike had told Patty how lucky she'd been to escape the hitman, never suspecting that Ellen had been the target all along. Patty's sure that most people would have her trade places with Ellen in a heartbeat, and knowing that Patty was the one to arrange the draining of life from that flawless body would only rack up the numbers in favor.

Screw them all. Patty wins, she _always_ wins, and that's why she's still standing, maybe taller than ever. To the world, she's the tragic victor who can play Ellen's death for a moment of sympathy when people get around to calculating just what Patty's cut of the settlement was. Still useful, still helping Patty from beyond the grave, even though Ellen's boss was the one to put her there.

It must be the Scotch, making her pathetic, when the tears return. Crying at the lake was one thing, the rawness of the moment and the panic of the world closing in around her were entitled to rattle Patty for a minute. Six weeks later, why she should be sobbing into a sofa cushion is a mystery to her. She'd barely known the girl, Patty tells herself.

She did what she had to do.

Isn't that how she's justified everything from hiding the truth about Michael's father to averting her eyes from Phil's infidelities? Self-preservation wasn't just a skill to Patty, more a way of life. She survived, almost intact, and there was never time to mourn the ones who didn't.

Uncle Pete doesn't look her in the eye when he brings the post now. Patty pretends that it's normal, that she hasn't asked him to cross one line too far. Tom suspects, maybe, but he's too intent on the partnership she has no intention of offering to cross her. Phil doesn't ask why Patty's eyes are red-rimmed when he comes down in the morning, and she supposes that she's getting away with it again.

In the early morning sunlight, the stains are more vivid than ever. Patty forces her eyes away, wiping the tears from her cheeks with a vicious swipe of her hand.

She will endure; she has no choice.


End file.
